First netbooks, then tablet PCs
The only thing certain about the IT industry is that there is no certainty.
A year ago the buzzword was netbooks. Most people had one and everyone wanted one. The ultra-portable machines were flying off shelves and every PC maker and operating system developer was scrambling to claim a portion of the market.
As many as 10 million netbooks were sold in the first quarter of 2010, according to analysts DisplaySearch, and notebooks were being chased out of the market.
A year later and netbooks are now the hunted, this time by tablet PCs.
Ever since Apple released its iPad the market sentiment has swung in favour of tablet PCs and although sales of netbooks are still buoyant their future looks chequered.
The EEE factor
When Asus released its EEE PC in late 2007 it was a revolutionary breakthrough. Until then notebooks had been portable, had heavy hard drives and chewed through battery life.
The EEE PC was different. It was small, lightweight and took little more space than a small novel. Which made it perfect for travelling, slipping into a bag when heading out of the office, or even for school-goers.
The first EEE PC wasn’t perfect. It had a tiny keyboard, just 2GB or 4GB of storage space and a tiny 7-inch screen. But it was enough. With low prices never seen before in portable computers, consumers loved them. They were so cheap you could pick up a couple and share them with your family.
Naturally, the interest in netbooks boomed. Within months everyone was producing a netbook. Until just a few months before the idea of an under-powered, cheap notebook was unimaginable. Now everyone was producing one.
Bloat
Then the problems started to set in. Not content to only sell small, lightweight, portable netbooks, manufacturers reverted to their old stomping ground: adding more and more features.
Netbooks started sporting 250GB hard drives, screens in excess of 10-inches in size and built-in 3G. And along with it prices rocketed and battery life plummeted.
Suddenly they were no longer cheap nor suitably portable.
The next stage was tablet PCs.
Tablet PCs have been around for years but, until netbooks PCs proved the consumer appetite for small, portable devices, they were largely a specialist market, with some even predicting they would die.
And then the Apple iPad was launched. The iPad, and other tablet PCs, offer almost all of the advantages of a netbook in a neater package. Suddenly tablet PCs are the next big thing and, again, all manufacturers are scrambling to position themselves.
The market numbers also tell a story. Compared with the 10 million netbooks sold in the first quarter of 2010, Apple sold 700 000 iPads. And in the first couple of months of the second quarter of the year, Apple sold 2 million iPads. Cleary netbooks are still ahead, but for how long?
DisplaySearch says: “DisplaySearch expects that the iPad will continue to account for an increased share of the mini-note PC/slate segment in Q2’10. In the second half of the year, as additional slates are launched, the clamshell-style mini-note PC (netbook) could continue to lose share.”
The company goes on: “The last quarter of 2007 heralded the birth of the mini-note PC (netbook). Q1’10 signalled the birth of the slate PC, and possibly by extension, the beginning of the end of the mini-note PC (netbook).”
On the other hand notebook sales are still strong. Stronger than it has been since early 2008, according to DisplaySearch. Which suggests that netbooks could well see a rapid decline over the coming year.
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